Bags have been utilized for packaging store-bought goods for many years. In places where trees are plentiful, paper bags are utilized, which are easily separated from one another for use as needed. In other areas, plastic bags are preferred. These bags are packaged in stacks of flattened bags, or are sold as perforated sheets rolled about a core.
Regardless of the type or design of the bags used, the bags themselves are costly, so it is preferable to the storeowner that each customer take only as many bags as needed for his or her purchases. In particular, at present many customers take home a number of empty plastic bags for a variety of personal uses, in addition to those needed to wrap the customer's purchases. Furthermore, since plastic bags do not degrade, the billions and billions of plastic bags thrown away today are clogging up the land, the drains, the rivers, and the seas, and creating a severe, world-wide environmental problem. In order to solve this problem, some countries, like Ireland, have begun collecting taxes for each plastic bag taken from stores. In other areas, stores have begun charging customers for the bags they use or take away. Yet another solution is biodegradable plastic bags, although these are expensive to produce and have so far proved unsatisfactory in use.
Furthermore, since the bags are generally of plastic film, it is often difficult to open them. They usually must be crumpled or one side rubbed against the other, in order to open them. One solution to this problem was proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,006,495, which discloses an automatic bag dispenser. This device is located adjacent the cash register, under a conveyor or shelf, and includes two parallel rollers arranged to rotate in opposite directions and to engage a single bag between them, thereby folding the bag and removing it from the stack. The bottom of the bag, which is engaged first, is passed through a slot into a container, where one side of the bag remains held by the device. This permits the other side of the bag to be grabbed and the bag opened for filling with groceries.
Another device for dispensing plastic bags is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,174,413 to Cappi et al. This is an apparatus for dispensing and opening plastic bags from a continuous strip wound in a reel, and incorporates a scanner connected through a computer to a shutter located on a mouth through which a consumer may insert a product into the bag, so that the computer controls the opening of the shutter and the operation of the scanner. This apparatus is designed for self-service by the customer, and is designed to ensure that only one item at a time can be placed in the bag and only after being scanned.
Yet another device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,437,346 to Dumont. This patent discloses a purchase checkout station to be used with a purchase monitoring device, which scans a bar code of an item to be purchased and transmits purchase and pricing information regarding the items to be purchased to the purchase checkout station. The purchase checkout station of this patent includes a verification platform whereon each item to be purchased is individually placed and verified as the item which has been scanned, whereafter the verified item to be purchased, and only that item, may be placed into an automatically positioned and opened bag which receives a pre-determined quantity of items to be purchased therein and is sealed for secured removal by the consumer subsequent to payment. This apparatus is also designed for self-service by the customer, and provides coordination and verification that products scanned by the scanner are, indeed, the same products introduced into the bag.
These devices are constructed and adapted to permit controlled recording and packaging of purchased items. They are not concerned with the quantity of bags dispensed for each customer or with the timing of bag dispensing.
In order to encourage additional purchases by the customer, particularly of specific selected products, it is known to place advertisements or a list of commodities offered at a special price at the checkout station. In many cases, the cashier will suggest to each customer that he purchase one or more of these selected items.
Accordingly, there is a long felt need for a bag dispensing device which dispenses a single bag at a time and includes a control unit for controlling the number and rate of bags dispensed, and it would be very desirable to have such a device which provides two-way communication between the bag dispensing device and an electronic cash register or other electronic checkout station or a store controller for purposes of controlling dispensing of bags and collecting and transferring other information about and to each customer. In particular, it would be desirable to have a display, which is automatically controlled by the cash register or store controller and displays to each customer additional commodities which the store is interested in selling.